


A Very Rough Landing

by akblake



Series: It's What Friends Do [1]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Episode: s01e08 The Mile High Job, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 22:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akblake/pseuds/akblake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What really happened after the end of The Mile High Job... Parker was a little more banged up than they realized after being thrown around with the luggage and Eliot tries to show her what friends look after each other. Very mild cursing. Can be read as slightly shippy if you want :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Rough Landing

“Okay you guys, I’ve managed to get four seats on the next return flight out of the Caymans, but it doesn’t leave until tomorrow evening. I emailed y’all the details,” Hardison explained in their earbuds and they could all hear furious typing in the background followed by a curse. “The hotel system there is insane! It’s barely even online; we’re talking Fred Flintstone folks, so I can’t forge reservations. There’s a hotel about half a mile down that road, but I can’t guarantee you’ll get rooms together- those folks on the plane gotta stay somewhere.”

Nate idly watched the passengers walking by. “That’s fine, Hardison, we’ll take care of our own rooms and meet up on the flight.”

Eliot tuned out the conversation happening around him. Something had caught his eye off to his left and he unobtrusively turned his head to scan the area. No one was overly close to their group or behaving suspiciously, all disembarking the plane and heading to the mainland with all speed, so he couldn’t immediately spot what had set off his alarms. He kept watch for a few moments longer and then caught it- Parker was very slightly swaying, despite her unusually rigid stance, almost as if she were standing on a moving platform and had to keep her balance. Nate and Sophie had moved off, already embroiled in another of their arguments, and didn’t seem to notice that they’d left Parker behind.

“To make up for being a forgetful lout, Nate is going to take me shoe shopping,” Sophie called over her shoulder as they strolled away, glaring at Nate and daring him to disagree, “so we’ll book our own rooms when I’m done.” She captured Nate’s elbow and firmly steered him away. To anyone else, it appeared that Nate was gallantly escorting her, but Eliot knew that woman had a grip like a vice. Those two wouldn’t be any help in dealing with whatever was wrong with Parker.

She was still staring ahead and swaying as Eliot decided to step in. He dug his earbud out and tucked it in his pocket; if Parker was injured and hiding it, she wouldn’t thank him for letting the team eavesdrop, and he didn’t need their well-intentioned interference. None of them had any first aid training and would only get in the way. He carefully walked in front of her, crossing her line of sight, and waited for her eyes to slowly focus on him. Her sluggishness also gave him the opportunity to check and his suspicion was correct- from the uneven pupils she at the very least had a concussion. The sight of blood on the side of her neck between scarf and dress, on the wrong side for them to have seen it, lent credence to that belief. Parker always took care of herself, disappearing any time she was hurt, so Eliot knew that he’d have to approach the issue carefully. She didn’t appear to be in any shape to look after herself and he just couldn’t let her disappear.

“Hey,” he called softly once she recognized that he was there, “Nate and Sophie are going shopping, so we can go right to the hotel. Why don’t you let me have your earbud and I’ll hold on to it for you, okay darlin’?” Eliot waited as she processed what he’d said. Parker clumsily reached up to pull out her earbud, then stalled as she realized that she didn’t have any pockets to put it in. He patiently held out his hand, knowing that she hadn’t absorbed all his words, until she caught up and placed it in his palm. Eliot pocketed the device and got Parker moving towards the hotel Hardison had found. She moved more like a zombie than the graceful cat burglar she was, but he knew better than to crowd or put his hands on her to help her along. As long as she was moving in the right direction, he was willing to follow and keep her from faltering. It was a long half mile for them both.

As they entered the hotel, Eliot quickly wiped up what blood was visible with the napkin he’d held on to from the plane and managed to sit Parker on a lobby bench, her lack of fight more worrying than her sweating and pale complexion, while he went to charm the front desk clerk. “Well hi there,” he greeted with a wide smile, “I just need a room for the night, one of your best if you can.” Eliot looked over his shoulder to draw the woman’s attention to Parker. “My wife and I were on that plane, and I gotta make it up to her for us being stranded here.” The woman smiled sympathetically and was more than helpful and set the two up for a spacious suite, complete with kitchenette. “Oh, if you could, would you please send up a change of clothes? They haven’t released our luggage and we have nothing to sleep in or wear tomorrow,” Eliot laughed with the clerk, keeping up a very light flirting, and was pleased when she agreed. He ran a practiced eye over Parker’s form before giving the clerk their clothing sizes, confident that he’d gauged Parker’s right. Once he’d provided a spare ID and credit card for the file, he headed back to retrieve Parker.

She was sitting with her eyes closed and hadn’t relaxed her very stiffly upright posture. He suspected injured ribs but wouldn’t be able to check until they were up in the room. “Come on sweetheart, I got us a room,” Eliot gently spoke to get her attention. Hazel eyes blinked open at his voice and she visibly struggled to focus. He offered a hand up and let Parker decide if she wanted help, expecting her to refuse, yet was surprised when her small hand grabbed his to let him pull her to her feet. He frowned slightly at her back as she wandered toward the elevator bank; she’d begun to sweat slightly and her hand had been cold to the touch, both indications of shock.

Parker was still silent as he maneuvered them both into an elevator, selecting the fifth floor. “We’re in suite 515,” Eliot explained to Parker, more to break the silence than out of any expectation of a response. As expected, she didn’t say anything, only stood and swayed with the elevator’s motion. This close beside her, he could see the large knot behind her left ear where she’d hit her head. They hadn’t seen the blood as it’d run down into the scarf which covered her neck and been absorbed by her dark uniform. Damn woman hadn’t said a thing when they got off the plane, and she had to have known how bad it was even then. Once she was coherent enough to understand, he’d have to talk with her about seeking appropriate help.

Eliot escorted Parker into their suite and diverted her to the bathroom. If any blood dripped onto the floor, it would be easier for him to clean up tile than get it out of carpet. She started and seemed to grasp reality again when he sat her on the toilet lid. “Wha… Eliot, what are you doing? Where are we?” Parker blearily looked around and didn’t recognize anything.

“You hit your head when the plane landed and I got you to a hotel so I can clean you up,” he stuck to a simple answer just to be safe, and was glad he did when she spoke again.

“What plane? Why aren’t we back at the office with the others?” Parker tried to stand and nearly ended up pitching head first into the bathtub before Eliot’s quick grab pulled her upright. She put a shaking hand to the knot behind her ear and stared at the blood on her hand in befuddlement. “Why am I bleeding?”

Eliot looked over from the sink where he was gathering hotel towels, planning to steal clean ones from another suite to replace the ones he got bloody, and answered, “We were on a flight to the Caymans to protect an accountant and the plane had to make an emergency landing. You were in the cargo hold doing something with the electronics and got thrown around. ”

Parker looked at him blankly, said “Pomegranate,” and lapsed back into silence. Eliot looked over, baffled by her non sequitur, and decided in favor of getting on with things over asking about something she likely didn’t remember saying.

“Let’s get that scarf off you, okay?” he asked, having crouched down in front of her, and quickly untied the bloody fabric. It was dropped unceremoniously into the bathroom’s trash can. A knock at the door had him springing to his feet while steadying a startled Parker. “Stay here,” he ordered as he headed to see who knocked, shutting the bathroom door behind him. It would keep her contained and give him a backup barrier between her and anyone who could come through the suite’s door. Eliot slid over to the door, careful click the room’s light off so that he wouldn’t cast a shadow over the peephole or crack under the door. A quick check of the peephole showed a man in a bellman’s uniform and his memory pulled up the brief glance he got of the guy, wheeling a family’s luggage to the elevators, while he was booking their room. The guy seemed legitimate, so Eliot flipped on the lights, assumed his “happy, innocent civilian” face, and opened the door with a smile.

The bellman immediately held out a large shopping bag bearing the hotel’s logo. “You made an order at the front desk, Mister Cole?” Eliot accepted the bag and handed the man a decent tip, waving away the man’s inquiry if there was anything else that the couple required. He locked the door and dumped the bag’s contents on the room’s king-sized bed. Jeans, a tee, and button-down shirt for him, jeans and some sort of a loose peasant top for Parker, if he could judge women’s fashion. The front clerk had even been kind enough to include underwear for them, proving that she too had a good eye for sizing. Under the day clothes, Eliot found a skimpy nightie and basic sleep pants… perhaps the clerk read a little too much romance into Eliot’s marriage story. He shrugged away the thought- he wasn’t planning to sleep tonight and Parker wasn’t in any shape to care if she slept in his sleep pants and tee instead. They’d be large on her, but at least she’d be comfortable.

He carried the pants and tee into the bathroom with him and found Parker leaned, dozing, against the vanity. Clean clothes were dropped onto the sink and he crouched back in front of her. “Hey, gotta wake up,” Eliot gently stroked the side of Parker’s face from temple to jaw rather than tap her cheek to rouse her.

Parker blinked sluggishly and sat up, leaning into Eliot’s supporting arm, and blurted, “I blew up my parents.”

No amount of self-control or training could stop the startled, “What?” that left his lips. Eliot was left staring in horrified silence at his friend.

“You take out monsters, Eliot, and you’d have taken them out but I blew them up first,” she slurred, poking a forefinger into Eliot’s chest.

“When did you do this?” he asked, thinking it was merely the imagining of a scrambled brain which was fantasy-prone even on a good day. Eliot calmly removed Parker’s finger from his chest and tucked her hand back in her lap with a gentle pat.

Parker leaned her hurting head on Eliot’s shoulder, and let him gently stroke the back of her neck, “My teacher gave me a new Bunny for my eighth birthday and daddy took him away. Daddy always hurt me, and mommy yelled bad things, so I got Bunny back and blew up the house when they took a nap. I like a big boom,” she whispered. Eliot chuckled lightly- even as an adult Parker loved explosions.

He comforted Parker and realized that his conscience didn’t bother him about what she’d revealed. Eliot had known since their first job together that Parker must have had a bad life to have ended up as fractured as she was, and it did sound like her parents were a kind of monster, to use her word, that he wouldn’t have minded taking out himself. Instead, it only made him close his eyes briefly in sadness that she’d been forced to kill in order to escape the situation. A slight snore brought him back to the present and he gently sat Parker up, waking her in the process.

“Okay sweetheart, let’s get you fixed up,” he said, and reached around to the zipper on the back of her dress. “Can I help you take this off? It’s full of blood,” Eliot asked her permission before unzipping. Crazy woman may take her shirt off without a thought as to anyone else in the area, but his mama raised a gentleman. A flailing hand caught him under the chin, painfully slamming his teeth together, and he quickly backed off. “What the hell, Parker?”

“I can do it myself!” she yelled, still waving her hands jerkily to keep him back. “I take care of myself, always take care of myself!”

Eliot gently captured her wrists and propped her back up when the concussion caught up to her and she slumped. “Parker, stop. Look, I know that you can take care of yourself, but it’s okay to need help sometimes.” He could see that he wasn’t getting through to her, “Am I your friend, Parker?” Eliot met her eyes and waited as she considered her answer. She couldn’t think straight right now, but he hoped to get this part through to her if nothing else. She slowly nodded. “Well, and you’re my friend too. Friends help friends, so it’s okay if I want to help you. Will you let me?” Eliot felt like he was talking to a small child, but he had to get her to quit fighting him.

Parker eyed him suspiciously before nodding again. She reached out to pat his head, misjudged, and nearly poked him in the eye, “My friend Eliot.” He’d killed people for less than she’d done in the last ten minutes, but Parker seemed to have a complete pass when it came to assaulting his person.

Since she seemed to have calmed, Eliot unzipped her dress and carefully peeled the drying fabric from her skin. She’d actually worn a sports bra under the dress rather than going without and he wasn’t looking forward to skinning her out of the constricting thing. He could feel that it was tacky along the back band from where her blood had run down and been absorbed. Head wounds bled like nothing else, but at least this one appeared to have slowed for now. He’d have to be careful when he cleaned it or it would just start bleeding heavily again, and he didn’t have his safe house’s supply of bandages.

Eliot was helping her get her arms out of the dress when she suddenly frowned at him. “Why does my head hurt?” she asked, reaching around to feel at the knot.

“Don’t do that, sweetheart, or you’ll make it really bleed,” Eliot again caught her hand and returned it to her lap, “We were on a job and you hit your head.” He tried to keep his answer simple as he knew she had at least a grade two concussion, and suspected that it was actually grade three but had no way of finding out if she’d lost consciousness; he’d learned the grading system while playing football in high school and though now outdated it still gave him a starting point. Given her confusion, memory loss, and irritability Eliot was very thankful that he was the one looking after her- Nate and Sophie, while well-intentioned, had absolutely no idea how to deal with her or what to watch out for.

Parker’s frown turned into a mulish scowl. “I can look after myself!” she shoved him back onto his butt and tried to stand, only to end up sprawled partially on top of Eliot. He simply sighed, righted them, and sat her back on the toilet lid.

“I know you can look after yourself darlin’, but looking after each other is what friends do, okay?” He explained a second time and reached for his patience, keeping his voice low and even. While Parker seemed to mull that idea over, he wet a washcloth with warm water from the tap and began cleaning the now-dried blood off her neck and what he could easily reach of her back. She seemed to enjoy the soothing sensation, leaning into him as he worked, so Eliot dampened another washcloth with cold water and handed it to her, helping Parker bring it up to her face and not the knot behind her ear. “I haven’t cleaned that up yet, so just hold it to your forehead,” he had to stifle a laugh as she immediately pressed it to her skin with a gusty sigh of relief. “There now, you just hold onto that and let me do the rest, alright?” he asked, and got a nod from her.

Eliot finished cleaning what skin he could reach from that position, then braced himself for another difficult part. He needed to get her sports bra off before it dried to her skin, but it would be hard to get the skin-tight thing off over her arms and head; he’d watched girlfriends of the past wrestle with theirs enough to know that it was difficult even with a cooperating body, much less with Parker still confused and not much help. An idea struck but he needed to ask. Women were funny about their clothes and he didn’t know if Parker would have a fit or not.

“Parker,” he caught her attention again, “I gotta get your bra off, and it won’t be fun if I gotta get it over your head. May I just cut it off?” Eliot asked. Parker just barely nodded and shrugged in what he took as permission before she held out the now-warm washcloth for him to refresh with cold water. He handed it back and pulled the knife he always carried from its sheath on his ankle. “I’m cutting right up the back, then we can just pull it down your arms,” he kept up a slow stream of words as deftly parted the material, not really trying to get a reply, in the hopes that she wouldn’t decide to fight him right then. One of them would end up hurt and Eliot couldn’t predict which, so best to try and avoid it entirely.

“I like cereal,” Parker suddenly declared as he gently unstuck the two halves of her bra. He paused for a second then continued with a shake of his head.

“What kind of cereal?” Eliot allowed Parker to clumsily pull the straps down her own arms and she let it fall to the floor, unembarrassed by her partial nudity, before he tossed it in the trashcan with the scarf. He’d try to keep her distracted and let her help if it would avoid any more shoving or hitting.

“The kind with marshmallows- they turn the milk funny colors,” she explained while he finished cleaning up her back. Eliot decided to simply try and clean her hair as best he could and then let her shower tomorrow. It wasn’t worth aggravating her when it truly was such a small split in the skin and his experience told him that the underlying skull wasn’t fractured. She’d just had her bell thoroughly rung and was already more communicative than when they’d first entered the hotel.

Eliot tossed the now very dirty washcloth into the sink and helped Parker take her hair out of its ponytail- taking the tension off her skin should help with the headache from hell she must have. She suddenly started fighting again, trying to shove him away, before her stomach revolted all down the front of Eliot’s shirt and jeans. Parker miserably pulled her legs up and hunched over her knees, whispering, “I’m sorry,” repeatedly. Eliot simply closed his eyes and counted to ten in Hungarian.

“It’s okay sweetheart, you can’t help it,” he soothed Parker as he quickly stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, tossing the smelly mess into the shower bay. Parker still hadn’t acknowledged his words and he knelt back in front of her. “Hey, it’s okay- I ain’t mad, Parker,” Eliot firmly stated, reaching out to stroke her temple, the only part of her face that she hadn’t hidden behind her knees. She raised her head to show a very pale face and tearful eyes. “Hit your head hard enough and you get sick for a while, it’s normal. You’ll be just fine, but I can’t give ya anything for your headache when you’ll bring it right back up. We gotta wait a while.” Parker listened that time and let Eliot help her uncurl.

“I puked on you, Eliot, why are you still helping me?” she couldn’t understand. People always left when caring for her became difficult; they’d left when she was in foster homes, on the streets, and when she occasionally worked with another thief on a job.

Eliot shook his head in resignation and repeated his explanation, “It’s what friends do, hon; they look after each other.” Explaining the concept of friendship to her was more like explaining quantum mechanics to a five year old- all wide eyes and absolute incomprehension.

Between the two of them they got her into the tee he’d brought into the bathroom and then they were ready to get her out of the rest of the dress. Parker stood on wobbly legs, arm braced out against the sink, as Eliot helped her drop the dress to the floor and immediately looked away. She may have worn a bra, but that’s about all she wore. “What?” she asked at his reaction, more than ready to sit back down and not thrilled with his hesitation.

“Nothing,” he evaded and forced himself to move again. Eliot made sure to keep his eyes strictly on what he was doing and preserve as much of Parker’s privacy as he could. He knew that she had very little modesty, but didn’t know the exact limits of that yet, and didn’t want to add to her discomfort. They eventually got the sleep pants pulled up, and she had to pull the drawstring tight to keep them from falling back off her narrow hips. “Let’s get you a little more comfortable, alright?” Eliot asked and offered his arm to help Parker into the bedroom so that she didn’t have to sit all night long on the hard toilet lid.

Parker, of course, irritably refused his offer and slowly made her own way into the room, keeping her right hand on the wall for balance. Eliot took the opportunity to jog ahead, turn down the bedding, and toss their new clothing out of the way from the bed to the dresser. Parker gently sat on the bed and curled up against the pillows at her back, tucking her bare feet under the bedding.

Eliot dressed himself in the jeans and button-down shirt from the dresser while she made herself comfortable. He made sure to move the bedroom’s trashcan close to the bed just in case her stomach rebelled again, and picked up the room’s phone to call room service.

As he hung up, Parker blurted, “I stole the Stradivarius.” Eliot waited for her to continue, to explain the context, but she just put her head back down on her knees.

He pulled the room’s chair over so he could sit by the bed and asked, “What Stradivarius?”

“The Stradivarius from the plane, I stole it even though Nate didn’t want me to. Hid it in the galley when I went into the cargo hold, then when they were evacuating I put it in my suitcase. Airline won’t check what’s inside when they give everyone their bags back and will just mail it to the drop address I put on the luggage tag.” Parker grinned to herself, then had to quit as it seemed to make her stomach roll.

Eliot was back on his feet when someone knocked on their door and silently stalked over to check it. The same college-age bellman was back, this time with a cart which he rolled into their suite with a flourish. “Here you go: one steak merlot with steamed vegetables, one vegetable soup with oyster crackers, and two bottles of water. Oh, and an ice pack and acetaminophen?” The poor guy appeared quite befuddled at the last two items as Eliot chivvied him out the door.

“My wife is feeling a little under the weather, headache from the stress of our flight,” he explained, handing the guy another tip and securing the door again. Parker had already filled her soup with the crackers and was happily poking them under to watch them bob back to the surface. Eliot hid his grin and simply tucked into his own dinner; neither of them had eaten on the flight, and breakfast was only a fond memory. “Eat slowly, sweetheart, or it’ll come back up,” he warned and she obligingly slowed. Still, she was only halfway through the soup before she paled slightly and sat the bowl back on the cart. He watched her carefully, ready to grab the trashcan if necessary, but she only settled back against the pillows again, legs tucked up in a way that made Eliot’s joints ache in sympathy.

Eliot wrapped the ice pack with one of the bathroom’s hand towels and handed it to Parker. She accepted it with a heartfelt look of gratitude. “Thanks,” Parker muttered as she gently pressed the icy bit of heaven to the knot behind her ear. Blessed relief followed as the coldness spread and began to numb the skin.

“We’ll see if dinner stays down before I let you take the acetaminophen,” Eliot advised as he put his empty plate onto the cart and wheeled it out into the hallway. Cleanup done, he settled into the chair again and turned the room’s television on.

Parker immediately made a grab for the remote in his hand, missing by inches as she still didn’t have her equilibrium, and instead managed to nail a nerve cluster in his forearm. Eliot reminded himself to breathe through the fiery spasm running from wrist to elbow. She sat back, pouting, until he recovered enough to take pity and just hand the remote to her, then flashed him her wide smile of triumph. Eliot only had to sit through an obnoxious kids’ cartoon, complete with loud yells and flashing lights, for a few minutes before her headache won and she had to change the channel. They ended up on a more sedate TV show rerun and were soon settled into bored silence.

Eliot kept a discreet watch and didn’t see any changes in Parker; no tremors, lax features, or sweating, and her eyes were more or less accurately tracking the actions on screen. It should be safe for him to let her sleep once he got the painkiller into her.

As the credits rolled an hour later and Parker still hadn’t gotten sick again, Eliot dumped four tablets into his hand, “Here, these are just acetaminophen to help your headache. Go ahead and take these, then you can sleep.” Parker looked like she wanted to refuse them, but apparently the throbbing in her head changed her mind as she snatched the white tablets out of his head and downed them with a sip of water. Eliot took advantage of her preoccupation to check on her ice pack and found it still satisfactorily cold, so he simply wrapped it back up and let her reclaim it.

Parker curled up on her side under the covers, taking up no more space than a child and Eliot was forcefully reminded that, for all her forceful personality, she was actually quite tiny in body. She was exhausted enough to fall asleep in just a few minutes.

Eliot sat for a few minutes, ruefully massaging his arm to work out the lingering soreness, then turned off the television and prepared to doze through the night in his chair. He’d stay awake enough to monitor traffic in the hallway and to listen if Parker needed him, but he could feel the pull of sleep on his muscles. They’d all had a very, very long day, and he still had a bit of a headache himself from where Erlick slammed his head into the sink while they fought. A little sleep would put that right, and Eliot dozed off.

They both slept the night through and into early afternoon, though Eliot woke every time Parker shifted and was thankful in this case that she was an active sleeper. If she was moving every few hours, then she couldn’t have fallen into a coma from brain damage which he may have missed.

Neither roused for the day until Eliot’s cell phone chirped and brought them both wide awake. Parker dashed off to the bathroom to relieve her full bladder while he dealt with the phone call. She reentered the room to hear him state that they’d been playing poker all night long and would meet Nate and Sophie once they’d had a chance to freshen up. “Poker?” she queried, very confused. Parker remembered parts of the night, and poker hadn’t been anywhere in it.

“You want me to tell them you were hurt?” Eliot asked, looking at her and holding out the bottle of acetaminophen. Parker shook her head no and scrunched up her nose at the bottle. “Thought not. So, here’s the story- we were both still too wired from nearly crashing and I was teaching you the finer points of playing poker as a way to wind down. We lost track of time and ended up playing all night, which should explain why we slept so late. Nate also wanted me to let you know that he’s changed the plan; we’re meeting them in the lobby instead of on the plane,” Eliot finished his summation of the phone call before continuing, “And Parker, you need to take another dose- that headache won’t let up for a few days yet and you’re not gonna appreciate the pressure change as we fly. Either you dose up now and keep it with you or they’ll figure out that something’s wrong when you grab your head in pain once we’re in the air.”

Parker narrowed her eyes at him, but with logic like that she really couldn’t argue back. She swallowed three tablets and tossed the bottle onto the pile of clothes on the dresser. “I call shower first!” she exclaimed and darted into the bathroom only to stop short in dismay. Eliot’s messy shirt and jeans were still in the shower bay where he’d thrown them last night and she really didn’t want to deal with them up close.

Eliot, though, came to her rescue. He’d pulled the liner out of the bedroom’s trash can and dumped the clothes, bloody towel from the sink, and the bathroom trash can’s contents into the bag, twisting and then tying the top. “I’ll go and get us jackets while you shower, and I’ll dump this so they don’t find it,” he said as he made one last visual check of the bathroom. “I put your change of clothes on the bed for when you get out.” Satisfied that he’d gotten all the evidence of last night, Eliot walked back into their suite to retrieve the room key.

“Hey,” Parker called back to stop him, “I wanted to keep the dress and scarf!” She’d liked the silly things and they never knew if she’d need them again for another con.

“You got blood all over them, Parker, and it won’t just wash out,” Eliot growled with exasperation, but relented when he saw her crestfallen face. “I’ll get ya another set when we get home,” he promised.

Parker looked perplexed. “How are you going to do that?”

Eliot gave her his biggest cocky grin as he slipped through the suite’s door, “The same way I found out flight attendants carry extra uniforms.” He was gone before she could even consider asking what he meant. Honestly, he wasn’t going to explain that kind of thing in detail to her!

Parker puzzled over his answer for a few minutes before she just accepted that he’d keep his word and get her another uniform even if she didn’t understand how, and busied herself with carefully washing her hair without poking or scratching the still incredibly sore knot behind her ear. Mission accomplished she toweled dry, choosing to just dry at her hair rather than deal with the pain of wrapping the towel around her head, and walked into the bedroom to see what clothes were waiting.

She couldn’t complain about the jeans and top as they were the right sizes and she didn’t care a bit about style, but the lacy panty and bra set did make her pause. Parker considered going without both, but she knew that Sophie would take one look at her and begin lecturing on how a woman was supposed to dress, so she shrugged and donned the distasteful things. She was just settling the top over her midriff as Eliot returned, shopping bag in hand. Parker’s eyes lit up and she made a little gimme motion for him to hand over the irresistibly-opaque bag.

Eliot smirked yet surrendered his purchases to her investigation and grabbed the new boxers, along with the tee she’d tossed on the bed after her shower, and escaped to the bathroom as she dumped out the bag’s contents. He quickly finished his own washing and dressed in the bathroom, discarding the undershirt and boxers he’d worn yesterday and last night. He could go for a week in the same clothes, had gone longer in the past, but he couldn’t stand to put dirty clothes on his clean body if he absolutely didn’t have to. Eliot tied back his wet hair and was ready for the day.

Parker was already in the soft black jacket he’d bought, knowing that the plane could get a little chilly, and was stroking the sleeve. “I like it,” she declared as he exited the bathroom. She got a small smile for her comment and watched as he layered the thin hoodie he’d found under his jacket and tucked the small bottle of acetaminophen in the hoodie’s front pocket to conceal it.

“We ready?” Eliot asked as he cast a glance around the room for anything they might have missed. Nothing caught his attention, other than the sleep pants and yesterday’s boxers picked up and rolled together to dispose of as they left. He remembered something and stopped Parker in the hallway, “Here, I kept your earbud safe,” he explained and pulled the tiny device out of his jacket’s pocket.

Parker cheerfully accepted it back, tucking it in her own pocket so that she didn’t have to listen in if Nate and Sophie were arguing, as they always seemed to do. She’d put it in once they met up with the others.

The two looked at each other for a moment, caught by an odd feeling, and then let the past night’s actions slip away without comment as they resumed their trek to the lobby. She still didn’t understand why friends would look after each other, but Parker was beginning to think that the idea had merit, and Eliot still thought that she was nine kinds of crazy, but was still more than worth the effort to look after even if he ended up bruised in the process.


End file.
